


a madness

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bodyguard, F/M, Royalty, Season/Series 02, Virtual Reality, Ward x Simmons Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was never his to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a madness

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warning** in the end tags because it contains spoilers. So look at your own risk.

 

What is life? A madness.  
What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story.  
And the greatest good is little enough;  
for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.  
**\- Pedro Calderón de la Barca, _Life is a Dream_**

 

 

(Quinn’s grinning like a maniac, doesn’t give a shit about the cuffs or the bruises blossoming on his face. He’s loving every second of their worry.

Melinda wonders if she can break his arm without anyone noticing.

There’s nothing for her to do here - it’s all science and technology way beyond her - so she’s on prisoner duty, keeping a hand on Quinn to make sure he doesn’t make a break for it. Or make a run for the machines to make things _worse_. 

Not that that seems possible at the moment.

“How do we get her out?” Phil asks. His face is set in grim lines; whatever Bobbi told him must’ve been bad.

Melinda looks to the reclined chairs in the center of the room. There are two of them, both occupied, but obviously the team’s more concerned with getting Jemma out than Ward.

She could be sleeping - she _is_ sleeping, Trip says - but she’s also dreaming courtesy of Quinn’s latest psychotic invention, and they can’t risk just tearing her out of it. Which is the only reason Quinn’s even here. If May had her way, he’ be rotting away in Vault D right about now, but he’s the only one who knows what this damn thing does.

“You don’t,” Quinn says, giving a little shrug even though it’s gotta hurt with his hands still cuffed behind his back. “None of the test subjects ever came out of SR. Didn’t matter if we unhooked ‘em ourselves, pumped ‘em full of adrenaline, electrocuted ‘em … they all just kept dreaming.” He looks to Jemma and Ward and tips his head carelessly. “Of course none of them survived longer than a month after being hooked up, so it won’t be too long.”

Fitz is looking like he might be sick - or violent, it’s a toss-up - and the others just look like they want to knock Quinn’s teeth in. Skye keeps shooting guilty looks at the beds - and that’s a conversation they’re gonna have later; it is _not_ her fault she couldn’t go on that mission. Phil jerks his chin towards the door; Quinn’s useless to them here.

Melinda drags him out gladly, taking particular pleasure when he trips over the stairs. Now that they’re away from the others, he’s showing his hurts a little more, grunting and cursing when she hauls him outside.

“You’re wasting your time,” he says as they climb the ramp of the waiting quinjet. “Those two are dead already.”

She shoves him towards the seats. He lands on his side like a beached whale, his legs scrambling to keep him from rolling straight to the floor.

There’s an agent in the copilot’s seat up front; he dares one look over his shoulder before facing forward and pretending he has no idea what’s going on. Good man.

“But why?” Melinda asks. “You said you pulled people out, but they refused to wake up. Why?”

Quinn shrugs and uses the motion to sit more upright. “I dunno. Guys in R&D had lots of theories. Maybe they forgot it wasn’t real. Maybe they just liked the simulated reality better than the real thing. And can you really blame them? This world kinda sucks, no thanks to SHIELD.”

She’s not going to hit him for that. She’s not rising to this piece of shit’s bait.

“Or HYDRA,” he adds with just enough twist they both know he’s making an accusation, not an observation. For that she hits him.

He groans loudly and lands on the floor.

“Watch him,” Melinda orders and the agent at the wheel jumps to attention. She heads back down the ramp and into Quinn’s facility. She might know a way to pull Jemma - and maybe Ward, if she’s feeling generous - out of whatever fantasy Quinn trapped them in.)

 

 

+++++++

 

 

The phone rings - which is just rude given how his head is pounding - and he reaches for it blindly. He had enough sense last night to shut the curtains tight before falling into bed, so the light of the screen burns like a miniature sun in his hand. He blinks rapidly and squints and just makes out Joseph’s name.

Good. Maybe he can quit over the phone instead of having to go in and do it.

That’s what he’s gotta do, he’s decided. Two straight days of pub-crawling and it’s the best solution he’s come up with - short of high treason.

So whatever Joseph’s calling about - a schedule change or a request he come back early - tough luck. Grant is out. Done. They can even keep the crap he left in his locker; he doesn’t need it.

And if his gut twists when he thinks about never seeing her again, about the look on her face when she finds out he just up and left without even a goodbye, well, that’s just the ringer aggravating his roiling stomach.

“I’m on vacation,” he says in lieu of hello.

“Not anymore you’re not,” Joseph says - it sounds like he’s walking somewhere, walking _fast_. “The little mermaid’s been kidnapped.”

Grant sits up so suddenly pain knifes through his aching skull and he’s almost to the edge of the bed on that one burst of movement. “What?” he demands, the word coming out a croak. The little mermaid isn’t just some fairy tale, it’s the Royal Guard’s codename for the _freaking princess_.

He feels like he’s gone blind. Even with the curtains shut tight, he should be able to make out the shape of his TV and his desk, the shadow of the mattress’s edge against the deeper shadow of the carpet. He doesn’t see any of it. All he sees is his own imagined vision of Jemma’s heartbreak when she finds out he’s not coming back.

Only now she might never know.

Grant’s chest feels hollow.

“That Hastings guy we got to fill in for you? He’s a separatist. I’m at his flat now. Eight-hundred West Oli-”

“I know where it is. I’ll be there in ten.”

Joseph doesn’t bother to ask how Grant’s gonna make it there so fast when he lives twenty minutes from that part of town on a good day, he just says he’ll see him soon and lets him go.

 

 

+++++++

 

 

Hastings’ door is wide open and Grant walks right through. “What do we know?”

Guards are rifling through Hastings’ belongings but only Joseph looks up from the book he’s been flipping through. He tosses it aside carelessly and Grant notes that it’s _The Hunger Games_. “Not much. Hastings was careful - that’s how he got clearance to her personal detail.”

He heads deeper into the flat, and Grant follows, trying to find answers in every scrap of minutiae he catches sight of along the way. Maybe the junk mail in the entryway contains a coded message. Maybe those theater tickets on the fridge are to cover a separatist meeting. Maybe he got that poster while picking up his mission assignment.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Ellert’s dead.”

Grant curses.

“They left his body in the street. We didn’t even find him until-” Joseph stops - talking and walking both. He’s been head of the Royal Guard since before Grant joined. He’s been around so long Jemma talks about him like he’s _family_. But he wasn’t always in the palace. He started as a soldier, saw no small amount of hell overseas. He smiles now, a sad little thing that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Ellert won’t be getting an open casket funeral, let’s just say.”

A shiver crawls up Grant’s spine but it’s nothing to the horror that washes over him when Joseph opens the closet at the end of the hall. There are no coats or shelves inside, just a three-by-three space covered in photos of Jemma.

Jemma smiling. Jemma reading. Jemma dancing at that charity ball last month. Jemma in an argument with one of her friends from university.

Jemma and Grant.

There are other guards too, but Grant shows up more than the rest. It’s not a surprise, really, he’s been her shadow for the better part of a year, but it still punches him in the gut. Seeing that smile she reserves just for him plastered all over this asshole’s walls makes him want to do some damage.

He reigns it in and reaches for one of the photos. They’re not all stalker shots taken from far off, some are clippings from newspapers, but this one’s definitely the former variety - and Hastings is in it.

“He didn’t plan this alone,” Grant says.

“Nope,” Joseph agrees. “And that’s good. Means there’s a plan in place, one we can get out ahead of.” He reaches past Grant to pull down another of the photos. “Hopefully.”

That last is said with less hope than Grant would like, but he sees why. The photo is from a scientific conference Jemma attended, one held two years ago, long before Hastings even joined the Guard. Whatever this plan is, it’s a long way ahead of them already.

 

 

+++++++

 

 

They’re not gonna find anything. Grant knows it within five minutes of arriving and he knows it two hours later when the team sweeping the place starts packing up.

His hangover’s still pounding at the back of his skull, so he lets them do whatever the hell they want and goes back into that serial killer closet. He closes the door behind him and sits against it and lets the pictures blur together.

Her heartbroken face is still at the front of his thoughts and he’s sober enough now to admit it’s not his imagination, it’s a memory. Four nights ago he got jealous and he got mad, and they fought. All because he let himself get so caught up in her that he thought…

He doesn’t know _what_ he thought. She’s his princess, she’ll be his queen someday. She was never his to love. There’s no version of reality where they could be anything other than sovereign and subject. He knew better than to let anything happen between them, let alone get attached, and now the last words he said to her - maybe the last words he’ll _ever_ say to her aside from the cold, detached ma’ams he threw out the next morning before his shift ended - were cruel and hurtful.

He fists his hands on his knees. They haven’t killed her yet. Anyone bold enough to kidnap the princess isn’t going to waste time _not_ telling the world they’ve killed her. So she’s alive.

But for how long?

There has to be something here. No one’s perfect, everyone slips up sometimes, _especially_ the guilty.

And the evidence of that is right there in front of Grant, isn’t it? There’s a grainy photo taken through a hotel window. The quality’s so poor it could be any two people in the world, but Grant remembers that dress. Hell, he even remembers the sound she made when her head tipped back like that, the way she clenched around his fingers and her ankles dug into his hips and the feel of her spine arching back against his palm.

Something inside him freezes and he reaches out to take the photo down. He remembers everything about that night, including the layout of the hotel. The only reason he didn’t bother shutting the curtains - okay, the only reason aside from how badly he wanted to rip that dress off her - was that there was next to no chance of anyone seeing them through the windows. The Primeaux hotel sits on top of a bluff and the rocks in the bay below are too treacherous for any boats to come near. The closest anyone could’ve gotten was more than two miles out, unless…

Grant’s up and out of the closet in a heartbeat. The photo is clutched in one hand while with the other he pulls up images of the Primeaux on his phone.

“What’s this?” Joseph asks when Grant practically shoves the photo in his face. “Oh,” he says darkly a moment later. He doesn’t sound worried at finding out the princess has been having some affair and he doesn’t sound surprised either.

Grant doesn’t bother worrying about that, instead he brings up his phone and an image of the bay from the hotel’s ballroom. There’s nothing but the ocean and the distant cape, marked only by the lighthouse jutting up from its end.

“Worth a shot,” Joseph says.

 

 

+++++++

 

 

The hotel staff is just as accommodating as Grant remembers - more so because while he was en route to the coast a royal order was sent down, demanding he be given full access to the facilities. It’s probably the first time in a hundred years that a royal order’s been used for anything other than holidays and knightings, so the staff is understandably flustered.

Grant’s got no patience for it while he holes up in a room on the top floor with a view of the lighthouse. All he cares about is hotel security’s report that more than half a dozen vehicles have passed by the main gate in the last twenty-four hours. The hotel and the lighthouse share the same road but, aside from the occasional lost tourist, the only one heading in and out is typically the lighthouse keeper - and she’s a shut-in who only comes out for supplies once a month.

So there’s _something_ going on out there.

Just the hope of being close to finding Jemma eases some of Grant’s tension, but there’s still plenty of it to go around. He still doesn’t know she’s here. For all he knows she’s back in the capital and he just flew over a hundred miles for nothing.

No. He can’t think like that. He won’t. He keeps his watch up, ignoring offers of room service and meaningless reports from hotel security. Whatever happens, it’ll come from the lighthouse.

Every so often he sees one or two people emerge from the distant structure to pull boxes from the vehicles. And once, just after Joseph calls to tell him that the team pouring over the security footage found Hastings driving one of the vans, a whole group comes out to haul a massive crate from the covered back of a truck.

He gets antsy after that - antsi _er_ \- eager for the sun to finally set. Given the lighthouse’s location, any approach is gonna be tough, and Grant’s plan is more than a little stupid. A boat ride into treacherous waters where anyone looking out at the water will see him, a swim from the boat to the cliff, and then a climb up. It’s idiotic and the prime time for it is just before sunrise, when the water will still be dark for his swim, and he’ll have better visibility for his climb. But like hell is he waiting another ten hours.

Not half an hour after the huge crate is moved inside, a woman and man step out of the lighthouse. Through Grant’s binoculars, he gets his first glimpse today of Hastings, and it’s only common sense that keeps him from smashing the binoculars in his rage.

The two seem agitated over something and, after a few minutes of arguing, the woman pulls out a gun and shoots Hastings dead between the eyes.

Shock’s still washing over Grant when she crosses off another two men who run from the lighthouse. He doesn’t see what happens after that, he’s too busy running. Down the hall to the elevator, shooting off a quick text to Joseph that things are about to go full FUBAR out here, and then straight through the lobby to the car the local military lent him.

It’s five agonizing minutes around the bay, and he doesn’t even turn off the engine before he’s out of the car and sprinting past the dead bodies that woman left behind. He tries to remember if she was in any of the separatist photos he looked at on his flight but he didn’t get a good enough look at her face to match her to any of them.

He’s going in blind here.

But Jemma could be in danger.

He’s got enough sense to clear the corners on the way in but there’s no need; whoever this woman is, it looks like she took care of every single person in the building. There are bodies in every hall, blood staining the walls.

Maybe- maybe she’s on their side. Maybe she’s a mole the king’s spy agency put in the separatist movement years ago and who wasn’t about to watch her princess be tortured. Maybe it’s all gonna be all right.

A gunshot sounds and Jemma screams.

Grant knows it’s from fear and not pain, but that knowledge only slows his steps so far that he doesn’t go bursting into the room the noises came from.

“What- what do you want?” Jemma demands, sounding every inch the future queen she is, even through her terror.

“I want you to _remember_ ,” says a woman’s voice. “Simmons, please-”

“Why do you keep calling me that? Why do you keep talking to me as though-”

“Like I know you? Because I _do_.”

Grant eases around the doorway. The woman’s got her back to him and is bent over what Grant’s guessing was in that big crate. It’s some sort of table and Jemma’s strapped to it. Her head’s caught in a big, circular something at the far end and it all looks like it’s straight out of a mad scientists laboratory; that cannot be a good thing.

The woman’s gun is gone - either abandoned or holstered - and in her hand she holds a bloody rag. Her fist hovers over Jemma briefly before landing against her shoulder. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you now, but you need to _think_. Think about your life and this world. _Really_ think about it.”

Jemma’s chin tips back. “If you’re trying to win me to your cause, you’re wasting your breath.”

Grant loves her. He never realized it before but he does. He loves her pride and her courage as much as he loves her kindness and her grace. He loves the way she smiles at every single one of her people like they matter just by themselves, just as they are. He loves the way she looks first thing in the morning and last thing at night, the way none of the paparazzi will ever see her. He loves every bit of her - and he’s not letting this bitch steal her from the world.

He steps into the room, careful not to slip on the blood pooling out from the woman’s last victim. Just one shot is all it’s gonna take but he has to make sure it’s the right one. If he misses, if she moves at the wrong moment, if he’s missed anything dangerous like a bomb or a kill switch … He’s gotta be sure none of that happens.

She shakes her head. “There is no cause. There are no separatists, no nationalists. None of this is really happening. This entire world is a lie.”

Grant pauses and he’s close enough now to see that Jemma’s expression is a mirror of his own.

“You’re insane,” she breathes.

“No,” the woman says, sounding perfectly sane and rational about it, just like a crazy person would, “I’m not. This is all some fantasy your brain’s created for you. Your body is back in the real world with your friends, with Skye and Fitz.”

Something passes over Jemma’s face and the woman’s posture strengthens. “You remember Fitz, don’t you? You recognize that name even if you can’t remember him. Simmons, _please_ , you have to let this world go. If you don’t-”

“You expect me to believe,” Jemma says slowly, “that nothing I know is real?”

The woman shakes her head.

“My life? My parents? My people? Gr-” Jemma sees him.

And the woman sees her see him.

She spins, knocking the gun right out of Grant’s hands. He catches the kick she tries to deliver next but not the punch that follows it.

“Grant!” Jemma yells as he falls back.

“Stay away from her,” the woman growls.

“Not gonna happen,” Grant says and comes at her.

She’s good. Really good. Grant’s probably the best hand-to-hand combatant in the guard, and this woman who’s got twenty years on him is wearing him down.

That might have something to do with how vicious she is. Every blow feels personal, like he’s done something to piss her off aside from just getting in the way of her psychotic plans for the princess. In fact, as the fight goes on, it feels more and more familiar.

There’s a certain choreography involved in fighting. You practice which block counters which attack over and over and over again until your body just does it without any conscious thought on your part. So it’s not weird that Grant’s blocking blows without thinking, it’s weird that he knows they’re coming without seeing them.

She aims a kick to the back of his head, and he dodges before he even knows she’s back on her feet. She tries to nail gun his foot to the floor while he’s stunned, and he stumbles back without ever having seen the nail gun at all.

He remembers what she said about this world not making any sense and he thinks back on this morning, on the trip from his place to Hastings’. He doesn’t remember it at all. He doesn’t remember the flight to the coast either. He knows it happened, he knows he spent it reading through files, but he’s always had a terrific memory and the only face he remembers seeing in all those profiles was this woman’s.

 _Now_. Now he remembers but did he remember it when he was rushing in here? Did he remember _any_ faces while he was trying to think of hers?

He can recite every word they’ve got on her - from her early training in the People’s Liberation Army to her days as a mercenary to her settling in Europe - but he can’t remember a single thing he read on anyone else.

She kicks him back, and he lets the force push him farther than he needs to.

“What is this?” he asks before she can come at him again. “If this isn’t the real world, what is it?”

Her eyes flicker over him, assessing. “A dream.”

Jemma scoffs.

“A very bad man,” the woman goes on, stepping aside to keep an eye on him while she aims her words at Jemma, “kidnapped you. He’s angry over some trouble we caused him last year and looking for revenge. He hooked you up to this- this machine and it put you here. You’d probably know what it does better than I do, you’re the scientist, but if you don’t wake up on your own, you’ll be dead in a month.”

Grant’s eyes flicker to Jemma, and the image he’s been trying to keep out of his head all day rises up. Not her teary eyes and quivering lip from the last time he saw her, but the way her face would go slack and her usually bright eyes hollow in death.

She twists to meet his gaze, looking more worried for him than for herself.

“So I’m just-” He swallows. “I’m just some fantasy her mind cooked up?” He tries for a cocky grin. “Her dream guy?”

The woman’s face is a cold mask.

“And what are you then?” Jemma demands. “If no one here is real, then why should I trust anything you say?”

“I’m your _friend_. I was able to enter your dream to try to snap you out of it.” She looks so sincere - but then the crazy do tend to believe their own bullshit.

“So no one and nothing is real,” Jemma says disdainfully, “but you are and you have superpowers. Yes, makes perfect sense.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Grant asks and it seems to shock them both.

“Grant-” Jemma starts but doesn’t seem to know what to say from there. How do you reassure someone that they exist?

The woman lifts her hand. She’s still holding that bloody rag from earlier, clutched it like a lifeline all through their fight. “It’s an anchor, something I’ve got here _and_ in the real world and that I can manipulate. It should snap me out of it. You don’t have one; you’re gonna have to _want_ to leave this world badly enough to wake yourself up.”

She shoots Grant one last look. She hates him, that much is obvious, but it’s understandable. She thinks he’s hurting Jemma, and he’d hate anyone who did that.

She drops the rag and-

And she’s _gone_.

She just vanishes into thin air, leaving Grant and Jemma alone in the quiet of the lighthouse.

Maybe it’s a few seconds, maybe it’s an hour, he doesn’t know, but he’s the first to speak. “Okay then.”

“Okay _what_?” Jemma asks as he crosses the room to her. “We just saw an insane woman vanish into thin air. What about that is okay?”

He lingers a little while he unties her, lets his hands brush against her skin for a little too long. And when he helps her sit up without bumping her head on anything, he slides his fingers in her soft hair.

“Grant?” she asks. She sounds scared. He is too.

He kisses her, and she clings to the front of his shirt. He can’t believe just this morning he was thinking of leaving her. How could he ever have imagined finding anything else when she’s-

He breaks the kiss and leans his forehead against hers.

She’s _everything_.

“Grant?” she asks again. Her arms are around him, clinging tight. He thinks she might know what he’s thinking.

He pushes away, backing up until he reaches the spot his gun fell earlier. He wants to look at her as long as he can.

“She said you have to want to wake up.”

“Grant.” Oh yeah, she’s definitely scared now. “You don’t- She was insane.”

“I don’t remember training,” he says. “I had to have had some, right? I know I spent time in the military and then a few months training for the Guard, but I don’t _remember_ any of it, just that it happened.” He keeps his eyes on her while he pulls back the slide and makes sure the safety’s still off.

Jemma’s shaking her head, her mouth’s open but no words are coming out. He lifts the gun to his temple and there it is, that heartbroken expression he’s been dreading. He really wishes it wasn’t the last look he’ll ever see on her face, but at least it’s her. At least he saw her, saved her. And now he can do it one last time.

“ _Don’t_ ,” she begs. “ _Please_.”

“Tell me you remember something,” he says. “Your first bicycle or your first day of school. _Any_ day of school.” He can’t. He can’t remember any of it.

“You.” She slips off the table and takes two stumbling steps towards him before stopping herself. “I remember _you_.”

He smiles. “I remember you too.” He remembers her with perfect clarity. Every second of their time together, every dull presser, every forbidden night is burned into his brain. “But I want more for you than a lie.”

He pulls the trigger.

 

 

+++++++

 

 

Pain burns across his vision and his breath comes in gasps and it takes him a few seconds to realize the agony he’s feeling is because of the bright lights overhead, not a bullet through his skull.

“Jemma,” he croaks, but it comes out a cough. His throat is so dry talking feels like spitting up glass.

His arms and legs shake when he tries to sit up and there are voices echoing around him, too loud and everywhere for him to understand. He understands the gun though, the one aimed at his head when he throws his feet over the side of the chair he’s been laying on. There’s a man with short hair on the other side of the pistol and he thinks … is he a _cowboy_?

The possible cowboy looks over his shoulder and Grant follows his eyes. May’s on the floor, being looked over by a blonde. Grant doesn’t waste time on them because looking that way brings his eyes to the chair behind his and Jemma. She’s sitting up too, just as shaky as he-

_May._

Grant’s eyes swing back to her as reality comes crashing down around him. It was May in the dream. _She_ killed the separatists. _She_ came in just to pull Simmons out.

But not him.

He smiles darkly. She would’ve been happy to leave him in there for the rest of his life. Bitch.

The voices around Grant are still fuzzy and hollow in his ears, but he hears Jemma’s “no!” loud and clear. She’s half up and still unsteady; he’s reaching for her before he thinks better of it.

Trip catches her, and everything goes quiet.

Grant lowers back onto the edge of his chair, keenly aware the silence is more about him than Jemma.

“Simmons,” Coulson says, pleading.

“Don’t kill him,” May says. She meets Grant’s eyes. “Yet.”

There are cuffs after that and hissed threats in his ear, and Skye’s musing - loudly - whether she’d get in trouble for mistaking her sidearm for her ICER. Grant ignores it all; he’s only got eyes for Jemma.

Trip’s got her against his chest, one arm clutching her to him because her legs are still weak and his other hand brushing her sweaty hair back from her face. It’s on the tip of Grant’s tongue to snap at him not to manhandle the princess, but his aching throat keeps him quiet. It’s not Jemma’s hands clinging to Trip’s shirt or the tender look in his eyes as he whispers words Grant can’t hear. It’s definitely not that.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning:** suicide attempt. The character does survive, however.


End file.
